Speaker 1: Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeartRadio. All right,
Speaker 1: good people, this is the Quest Love Show, reminding you
Speaker 1: folks that we are also a visual experience. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of you are just taking this in as a podcast,
Speaker 1: but we are on YouTube and we are gladly accepting subscriptions,
Speaker 1: likes and follows. All right, that's very important if you
Speaker 1: like what we're putting down on the show. What can
Speaker 1: I say? Our guest today is a personal personal hero
Speaker 1: of mine. He taught me the power of creative aisle crossing.
Speaker 1: I learned never to burn a bridge because you never
Speaker 1: know who you're gonna need in your journey in life.
Speaker 1: He taught me the power of being a renaissance person.
Speaker 1: He taught me the power of speaking of bridges, being
Speaker 1: a bridge like connecting people from all walks of life.
Speaker 1: And I guess through him, I learned that hip hop
Speaker 1: is really it's an art form and we need to
Speaker 1: hold it up as such. Of course, he's ubiquitous. You
Speaker 1: may know him too if you're a New York resident
Speaker 1: of a certain era. Of course you might have seen
Speaker 1: his legendary tags or his pieces on trains if you
Speaker 1: were lucky enough. He was the first person to get
Speaker 1: a shot out on hip hop's first number one rap single,
Speaker 1: not to mention he was instrumental and really bringing hip
Speaker 1: hop to the world. Be it first time that I
Speaker 1: got to see an actual, authentic representation of it if
Speaker 1: you saw Charlie Adhearn's Wild Style movie. Not to mention
Speaker 1: the platinum plus flooding of a lot of our classic
Speaker 1: era hip hop artists through a vehicle called YEO and
Speaker 1: TV raps, we would have never have heard of Jazzy
Speaker 1: Jeff for the Fresh Prince or NWA or Public Enemy
Speaker 1: or Queen Latifa or a Tribe or any of those
Speaker 1: pioneering groups that inspired us to go on. And he
Speaker 1: has a new book called Everybody's Fly and it gives
Speaker 1: astonishing detail about his life on Hancock Street in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: What can I say? The flies of them all fab
Speaker 1: hire Freddy Dude, the way so much, the way that
Speaker 1: Tarik and I would dream like all right, so you
Speaker 1: know I'm big on like manifesting and all that manifesting thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I would say that there's always two scenarios that
Speaker 1: Tarik and I and our journey, you know, it was
Speaker 1: like a seven year journey from high school to like
Speaker 1: when we first started busking on the street corners, right,
Speaker 1: And the first one is always what I call well Treek,
Speaker 1: and I'll always be something like, well trek Man. We
Speaker 1: just finished a four month run of like Indian Africa
Speaker 1: going on. We laugh, like wed be on the bus
Speaker 1: coming home from our insurance jobs. But like it was
Speaker 1: always a well Tarik moment. And the other one, Tarik's
Speaker 1: version was always ah, yeah, we live here on the
Speaker 1: fifty two bus at fifty second and Spruce Street with
Speaker 1: the one and only Questlove and like he would pretend
Speaker 1: he was you, and like, I guess the whole thing
Speaker 1: was like, you know, maybe one day we could be
Speaker 1: on your MTV reps and Wow, to talk to you
Speaker 1: now in this setting, one is ironic that I'm interviewing you.
Speaker 2: So it's perfect amazing. Yeah, that's so true.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is gonna be a very this
Speaker 1: will be a terry gross question.
Speaker 2: Haha.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is fly and who came up.
Speaker 2: With that term? Wow? Well, you know before it was
Speaker 2: I think you could probably safely say popularized in the
Speaker 2: hip hop space, very early hip hop space. In the
Speaker 2: Boogie Down Bronx, there was a great movie blaxploitation, although
Speaker 2: I'm not always crazy about that term, but super fly fly,
Speaker 2: so fly was just a term that meant, you know,
Speaker 2: you was cool, you had your gear right, you look right,
Speaker 2: you stepped right. And so in early hip hop, fly
Speaker 2: guys and fly girls was the way the participants were referenced,
Speaker 2: and so it kind of was sort of amplified in
Speaker 2: that space. And then in explaining to Chris Stine and
Speaker 2: Debbie Harriet and Nucleus of Blondie what was going on,
Speaker 2: what this scene was about, how it had its own
Speaker 2: slang and its own look and its own feel and sound,
Speaker 2: they kind of took it from me, put it on
Speaker 2: their record, and now I uh put it on the
Speaker 2: cover of my book as a title as you should,
Speaker 2: yeah should? Yeah.
Speaker 1: You have one of the more colorful alliteration names, fab
Speaker 1: five Freddy Yeah. Can you give me the history of
Speaker 1: how that moniker landed with you?
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, Well, you know, when I became a part
Speaker 2: of a group of graffiti writers that were legendary call
Speaker 2: the Fabulous Five short the Fab five, I became like,
Speaker 2: let's say, the final member to join, if you will.
Speaker 2: But my mission when I connected with Lee kenyonis who
Speaker 2: was the premium member of that group as a just
Speaker 2: outstanding painter muralists, if you will. When I became a
Speaker 2: part of that, I would tag up you know, fred
Speaker 2: and then Fab five, Fabulous five probably you know, just
Speaker 2: to tag Fab five and that became has just morphed
Speaker 2: itself into Fab five Freddy.
Speaker 1: So before you came, were they the Fabulous four?
Speaker 2: No, they were the Fab five. They were I guess
Speaker 2: at different times, probably more than five.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: It was just a cool thing, probably inspired by the
Speaker 2: by the Beatles to a certain extent, but probably even
Speaker 2: more so the kind of influence of comics, and you
Speaker 2: had the Fantastic Four, and so there was like that
Speaker 2: superhero influence which I guess influenced a lot of graffiti
Speaker 2: people as well as hip hop people. So it kind
Speaker 2: of was a popular thing, you know, the Treacherous Three,
Speaker 2: Fantastic Four, this, the four, the three to two.
Speaker 1: What year is this when the Fabulous well, the Fabulous
Speaker 1: five as a graffiti crew, they were strong through the
Speaker 1: seventies and they became known for painting whole car murals
Speaker 1: and they were just outstanding.
Speaker 2: And Lee, like I said, Lee keg Jonis was the
Speaker 2: premium member so they were renowned for that. But it
Speaker 2: was seeing Lee's work, particularly a mural he had did
Speaker 2: in the Lower east Side at fifty six Park on
Speaker 2: Madison Street. He was the first guy to paint like
Speaker 2: an entire handball court, as opposed to the like, you know,
Speaker 2: to the format of painting a train, which was a
Speaker 2: kind of a long horizontal. He painted this huge, kind
Speaker 2: of not a square but thing, which was outstanding. And
Speaker 2: when I saw that work, and he had written up
Speaker 2: in the upper corner, graffiti is an art, and if
Speaker 2: art is a crime, that God forgive all the fact
Speaker 2: that he was aware this was an art, and it
Speaker 2: clicked with ideas I had that pop artists had been
Speaker 2: inspired by similar things that had inspired graffiti, as it
Speaker 2: really developed into a way to make pictures and really
Speaker 2: tell stories with the imagery, and I had a feeling
Speaker 2: like we could move from the subway street space into
Speaker 2: an art space. I shared these ideas with Lee and
Speaker 2: we became a team, and hence I became a part
Speaker 2: of the group. I got with the original members, broke
Speaker 2: down what my plans were. They was like, go with it, baby,
Speaker 2: and I went with it all right.
Speaker 1: So you lived in New York city at various transit.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about each period. So the
Speaker 1: first ten years of your life, which I can say
Speaker 1: is the sixties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is.
Speaker 1: Your happiest memory of nineteen sixties New York?
Speaker 2: Like, what is a great day?
Speaker 1: What's happening?
Speaker 2: A great day? Was, you know, playing in the street?
Speaker 2: I did all that classic New York street stuff. We
Speaker 2: played all kinds of games. On the side was what
Speaker 2: was your main game? Some games were somewhat seasonal because
Speaker 2: when it warmed up you could play it was a
Speaker 2: game called skelly.
Speaker 1: Is that a street pool where you take a.
Speaker 2: Time of similar to street pool if you will. You
Speaker 2: had a kind of a diagram you would draw with
Speaker 2: little corners and squares. One through thirteen would be in
Speaker 2: the middle. You'd take a cap and sometimes people would
Speaker 2: put tartar in it or take a glass and you did.
Speaker 2: There's a way you could break the top of a glass.
Speaker 2: So the whole idea is you would shoot your projectile
Speaker 2: on this little field, so to speak, and you could
Speaker 2: knock somebody out. You'd go from one and then you
Speaker 2: went to thirteen. That was really popular, and then then
Speaker 2: we called it.
Speaker 1: Tops in Philly. Interesting, but we used to always get
Speaker 1: in trouble for stealing the red tops off of milk bottles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and all night like free put them in the freezers
Speaker 1: so they would have good traction.
Speaker 2: Okay, very similar Philly in New York City. I like
Speaker 2: to sometimes consider Philly the sixth Borough. It is because
Speaker 2: it was so connected culturally, esthetically, early graffiti, corn bread,
Speaker 2: I'm sure you know about it. So, yeah, that was
Speaker 2: just playing in the street. Was the litany of games
Speaker 2: we had, whether it was skelly, you know, all kind
Speaker 2: of games you played, but a little pink ball which
Speaker 2: was Spalldean was the popular brand, punch ball, handball, Chinese handball.
Speaker 2: You know. It was a bunch of games that we played,
Speaker 2: and that's how we played. That was the fun. We
Speaker 2: had Johnny on the pony, kick the can, red light,
Speaker 2: green light on two three coke, Olivia or ring Olivio
Speaker 2: if you guys from that era of New York you remember.
Speaker 2: So that was fun basically essentially, all right.
Speaker 1: So I also know that you had different experiences than
Speaker 1: say your peers or your friends, or at least I
Speaker 1: like to think, so, yeah, very different tho, Like, in
Speaker 1: the first ten years of your life, what is a
Speaker 1: memory that you experienced that was just like unique to you.
Speaker 1: And did you realize how different your life was than say,
Speaker 1: your neighbors, or your cousins, or whoever is in your
Speaker 1: age group.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I didn't think of it as being that different.
Speaker 2: As I grew older and began to reflect, I realized, Oh,
Speaker 2: my goodness, what an incredible household, What an amazing things
Speaker 2: going on that my dad was connected to that rubbed
Speaker 2: off on me and stuff like that. So I guess,
Speaker 2: you know something that I get into in the book.
Speaker 2: Early on, my dad was very connected and conscious with
Speaker 2: trying to find a better way for us as a people, specifically,
Speaker 2: so he was reading everything he could read. He was
Speaker 2: listening Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, you know, as African
Speaker 2: countries are gaining their liberation. I guess in the sixties
Speaker 2: and even prior, he was super dialed into all of that.
Speaker 2: And there was one incident that I get into really
Speaker 2: dramatic it had happened. It was the day Martin Luther
Speaker 2: King was assassinated. My dad, he had an old nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty seven Chevy and a couple of his friends. We
Speaker 2: got in a car to go to the Brownsville section
Speaker 2: different parts of the city. Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Ocean Hill, Brownsville,
Speaker 2: there were people were in a rage. There were fires
Speaker 2: going on. We had first went up on the roof
Speaker 2: and we looked out because he heard there was fire here.
Speaker 2: It was fire here, and we could see the glow
Speaker 2: of these fires in the distance. My father was connected
Speaker 2: to like a community organization in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: He said, let's go over there to make sure to
Speaker 2: try to keep it burning.
Speaker 1: Because I was like, my dad would been like, stay
Speaker 1: ass in the house. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, they were very involved in the community in Brownsville,
Speaker 2: which is still one of the livest edgiest parts of Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: And we went out there and while we were driving there,
Speaker 2: we were waiting at a light, I want to say,
Speaker 2: on Troy, right at the intersection before we make a
Speaker 2: left on Atlantic. While sitting there at a red light,
Speaker 2: I happened to glance to my right and there was
Speaker 2: a middle aged white man running furiously right at us,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, what's going on? And before I knew it,
Speaker 2: this man had opened the car and jumped in and
Speaker 2: literally like practically sat on top of me and right
Speaker 2: as he jumped in, it was a huge bang on
Speaker 2: the hood of a car. These black guys were chasing
Speaker 2: this man. They were enraged that Martin Luther King had
Speaker 2: been killed. This man, I do believe would have likely
Speaker 2: have been killed if not beaten really badly. He jumped
Speaker 2: in the car. My dad jumped out, scolded those guys
Speaker 2: because they banged the car. He screamed, this man is
Speaker 2: not our enemy. This man is not our enemy. I
Speaker 2: was iarified, and then we drove this man to the
Speaker 2: local police station, not far on Utica Avenue, the seventy
Speaker 2: seven precist. My dad was like, don't let them, let
Speaker 2: you leave on your own. Make sure they took he
Speaker 2: was on Atlantic Avenue. The Long Island Railroad ran. He
Speaker 2: was working at some whatever it was. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but he was walking to a stop on the Long
Speaker 2: Island Railroad, not aware of what was going on in
Speaker 2: the community, maybe not even aware Martin Luther King had
Speaker 2: been assassinated that day. So it was a traumatic, terrifying experience.
Speaker 2: But I remembered how my dad did the right thing.
Speaker 2: Took this man to the precinct and dropped him off
Speaker 2: and made sure He said, don't let you leave here
Speaker 2: on your own, make sure they drop you off at
Speaker 2: the train station. Right. It's one of those things you
Speaker 2: never forget, you know.
Speaker 1: And so okay, like my childhood, we had communities, and
Speaker 1: I think I was like the last generation of like
Speaker 1: the free lunch program from the Panthers and wo wow,
Speaker 1: when did that weighing off? Like when did anyone carry
Speaker 1: that on after your father? Did he just do it?
Speaker 1: What do you mean as far as like community organization
Speaker 1: and what is that entitled? As far as like community organizations?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, my dad was connected. There were a
Speaker 2: lot of people that were had become activists of sorts
Speaker 2: that were involved in very because I guess a part
Speaker 2: of what happened, I guess with all the doing the
Speaker 2: Johnson administration, there was a lot of money that went
Speaker 2: into the communities to kind of right some of the wrongs,
Speaker 2: to give some it was. They were like anti poverty programs,
Speaker 2: if you will. So my dad was connected with different
Speaker 2: guys that were involved in these community activities to get
Speaker 2: people jobs and employment. So he was just dialed in
Speaker 2: and our house was sort of like an interesting part
Speaker 2: of also my growing up was because my dad had
Speaker 2: consumed so much knowledge and he was kind of really
Speaker 2: up to the minute. Plus his jazz connections, there was
Speaker 2: at least four days out of every week there was
Speaker 2: a group of guys that would gather in the basement
Speaker 2: of a house to talk, discuss, stay up to the
Speaker 2: minute on what was going on, as change was happening
Speaker 2: and the Black Panthers were coming and all this stuff
Speaker 2: was going on. So he was super tied in. So
Speaker 2: that was also something that went on constantly as a youth,
Speaker 2: and I would pick up pieces and snippets. As you
Speaker 2: probably know, Max Roach, the great bebop jazz drummer, was
Speaker 2: my dad's childhood friend. It was my godfather, and so
Speaker 2: those my dad would be in his ear. They were
Speaker 2: all very concerned about all of these issues going on.
Speaker 2: That was something that was very prescient at that time.
Speaker 2: And some stuff that I picked up on didn't realize
Speaker 2: how much it affected me, but it did have an
Speaker 2: effect on the moves I would make, controlling the narrative.
Speaker 1: Your community organizer, your hip hop community organizer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, my earliest aspiration as a young kid
Speaker 2: was to be an architect, which didn't work out. But
Speaker 2: I think in terms of what I've been able to
Speaker 2: have my hands on. Culturally, I feel it's the type
Speaker 2: of architecture in terms of building and controlling the narrative
Speaker 2: was a key thing for me and whatever I did,
Speaker 2: because I would pick up snippets of their conversations that
Speaker 2: they wanted to run labels. They was guys were incredibly intelligent,
Speaker 2: super worldly, but when you think of the dynamics of
Speaker 2: that time, the hands were tied, if you will, in
Speaker 2: terms of what one could and could not do. I
Speaker 2: used to hear stories about Charlie Mingus wanting to start
Speaker 2: a label. One of my dad's close friends was close
Speaker 2: with Mngus. He wanted to have a label. But those
Speaker 2: things weren't always They weren't able to happen in the
Speaker 2: way people had desired, and they were frustrated. And you know,
Speaker 2: I always hadn't in my mind to you know, whatever
Speaker 2: I put together, I wanted to be able to control
Speaker 2: that narrative or make sure I can direct what that
Speaker 2: narrative would be.
Speaker 1: Do you think that maybe subconsciously you figured out the
Speaker 1: key to that sort of action, as is the power
Speaker 1: of connecting, like hey, let me meet this person, let
Speaker 1: me go to this part of town and see what's hitting.
Speaker 2: Here let me Yeah, somewhat. I didn't look at it
Speaker 2: like that, but I did think in terms of I
Speaker 2: had a slight understanding of how one gets a bill
Speaker 2: passed through Congress. You have to lobby and connect and convince.
Speaker 2: So I had a rough understanding. It wasn't clearly defined,
Speaker 2: but reaching out and being able to communicate with whoever
Speaker 2: was there was something I was determined to do. And
Speaker 2: I guess what really got that moving for me was
Speaker 2: specifically seeing the beginnings of the punk rock, new wave
Speaker 2: kind of revolution, if you will. I remember there was
Speaker 2: a page two or three story in the New York Times.
Speaker 2: Luckily my dad read everything, had always had all kinds
Speaker 2: of publications and reading about the sex pistols and how
Speaker 2: shocking that was, you know, coming at the Queen of
Speaker 2: England and what they were talking about was like really
Speaker 2: heavy stuff. And I began to look at some of
Speaker 2: what was going on around that. And as I'm developing
Speaker 2: ideas about this graffiti as art, this new music, how
Speaker 2: to bring this all together and present as one, I
Speaker 2: figured those people seem wild and crazy enough. If I
Speaker 2: can connect, I might be able to get an audience
Speaker 2: with some of these people to share these ideas which
Speaker 2: nobody was embracing or there was no love for any
Speaker 2: of this at the time.
Speaker 1: You were an army of one.
Speaker 2: I was an army of one or sure, and yeah,
Speaker 2: so that would be key in terms of meeting people
Speaker 2: that I guess it. I did connect, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: a specific thing. Ha, I wanted to make all these connections.
Speaker 2: I was just trying to get people to listen to
Speaker 2: my story, understand this crazy idea I had, and I
Speaker 2: was embraced and immediately found a lot of support from
Speaker 2: people in that new wave space, and that got things
Speaker 2: really moving aggressively. If you will, in retrospect, what was.
Speaker 1: The first act of creativity that you part took in.
Speaker 1: What was your first creative project?
Speaker 2: Well, besides me and a kid having art in school,
Speaker 2: whether it's finger painting in the single digit years of school,
Speaker 2: that was always a fun thing to do. But I
Speaker 2: guess it was really I did have a brief gig
Speaker 2: designing the imagery for these kind of candles that would
Speaker 2: be sold and that people would prey on. And you'd
Speaker 2: have these candles, yeah, like Lucky thirteen. People would have
Speaker 2: these things to hit your number or to bring good luck.
Speaker 1: Goodwill were designed that multicolored candle.
Speaker 2: I designed the image that would go on the glass sticker,
Speaker 2: a sticker.
Speaker 1: Well, it was like a well nowadays there's prints and
Speaker 1: Drake and Madonna, and someone showed one of my face
Speaker 1: on it, so you you those stickers that ever go
Speaker 1: on those candles kind of this It.
Speaker 2: Wasn't quite a sticker, but the imagery that would get printed,
Speaker 2: it would kind of turned it into like a screen,
Speaker 2: a one colored print that would be printed on the
Speaker 2: on the glass. And that was kind of like a
Speaker 2: first real kind of hired to do art type of thing.
Speaker 2: A buddy of mine termed me onto that, a kid
Speaker 2: across the street from me on Hancock Street investa and
Speaker 2: I did, I did. I did a bunch of those,
Speaker 2: so I was like when I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I was hired to do art. But really I guess
Speaker 2: from there that the more serious thing was when I
Speaker 2: connected with Lee Canonis became a part of five five,
Speaker 2: my mission to elevate this work into a kind of
Speaker 2: art gallery museum, find people that really understood the art
Speaker 2: to look at us. And that all came from the
Speaker 2: connections I made with people on the new wave scene,
Speaker 2: particularly Glen O'Brien advised me to you need to get
Speaker 2: some publicity. And the first publicity came in the Village
Speaker 2: Voice newspaper, a piece on myself and what Lee and
Speaker 2: I were trying to do. And that piece had my
Speaker 2: home phone number. You could reach reach out to us.
Speaker 2: We would paint a mural, or we would on your
Speaker 2: wall or whatever had five thousand square foot and that
Speaker 2: was all and the phone.
Speaker 1: Started reading thousand square foot. Yeah, we figured, you know,
Speaker 1: now it's five hundred thousand dollars easily right. Oh god.
Speaker 2: But we did get a few commissions came in. A
Speaker 2: few people hired us to come and spray paint a wall,
Speaker 2: you know, a couple. We did a few walls. But
Speaker 2: out of that, an Italian art dealer from a very
Speaker 2: prestigious gallery in Rome, the Gallery of Lamadusa, reached out
Speaker 2: and wanted to acquire some work engage with us. He
Speaker 2: saw we were cool. He had similar ideas that he
Speaker 2: would come. It's a very prestigious dealer and and he
Speaker 2: had homes all over the world, but when he would
Speaker 2: come to New York, he'd ride the train. He was
Speaker 2: fascinated and so he basically offered us an exhibit at
Speaker 2: this gallery in Rome, and that really was beyond expectation
Speaker 2: and it really got the ball rolling for what we
Speaker 2: wanted to do as artists. And then it kind of
Speaker 2: opened the door for other people from that same space
Speaker 2: that we kind of pulled in to get down with this.
Speaker 2: That included Futura, Crash Days, Pink and so it was
Speaker 2: a lot that happened in a miraculous way. But that
Speaker 2: was a key thing that set it up. I had
Speaker 2: also had recently become friends with Jean Michel Boskiot and
Speaker 2: he was just like me, same age. We're both trying
Speaker 2: to make similar moves in that space, and he was just,
Speaker 2: oh my god, it's just super exciting. And that really
Speaker 2: was a big moment. I really detail that thoroughly in
Speaker 2: the book What year was this? And Italy seventy nine?
Speaker 1: And you enjoyed it? Ah?
Speaker 2: Man, I got it.
Speaker 1: I get mad when people all right, My experience of
Speaker 1: Italy was kind of the opposite. Oh boy, it was
Speaker 1: not enjoyable. But also like just being a broke we
Speaker 1: were broke musicians living in Europe. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: we go on tour in order for us, you got
Speaker 1: to understand, like we were one of maybe eight black
Speaker 1: bands that still had a record deal. Wow, like the
Speaker 1: black band was a non existent thing. You know, hip
Speaker 1: hop sort has washed everything away. So we had to
Speaker 1: move to Europe. We like stole our budget money, got
Speaker 1: an apartment in London and we would just spend a
Speaker 1: month in each country. Let's go to France for a month,
Speaker 1: Let's go to Italy and Italy. Man just every night, man,
Speaker 1: like they thought we were part of this African cartel.
Speaker 1: We do our laundry and then their version of the
Speaker 1: FBI come in, let me see your IDs. Like every night.
Speaker 1: It was anything that's ever happened in like right a
Speaker 1: tech shows or problems with police.
Speaker 2: They would come and hassle you guys, only in Italy.
Speaker 1: Like we finally, I think maybe in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: had a good experience there, and so since then I've
Speaker 1: changed my mind about it. But to be broke in
Speaker 1: the summer of Italy, I hated every moment of it.
Speaker 1: So when people like talk all romantic about oh it
Speaker 1: was amazing, and we were just like depressed.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we had a much better experience, I guess.
Speaker 2: I guess the context of what we were doing. We
Speaker 2: basically you know, but we're basically there for this exhibit.
Speaker 2: And I had been reading about the Red Brigade. This
Speaker 2: was a militant Italian terror group, if you will, that
Speaker 2: were doing this thing that's people reference it now as
Speaker 2: you know, it was called kneecapping and they were shooting
Speaker 2: officials in the knees. They would ride by and spread
Speaker 2: these guys knees and then they would write graffiti to
Speaker 2: Red Brigade and they were like a radical thing against
Speaker 2: the it.
Speaker 1: It was like a political activist.
Speaker 2: Political terror group if you would have had people shook
Speaker 2: to their core. So me seeing stories and photos, you know,
Speaker 2: any no idea, Yeah, trust me. People, when you hear
Speaker 2: the term kneecapping, now that's where it originates. Wow, it
Speaker 2: was like kneecapping. It was a big thing. But because
Speaker 2: the graffiti connection, whenever you'd see a story about it,
Speaker 2: they would show the spray painting around. I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 2: graffiti and rome is a radical kind of thing. Maybe
Speaker 2: if they hear about what we're doing, these guys may
Speaker 2: want to show up and check our workout or something
Speaker 2: to that effect. When we had the exhibit at and
Speaker 2: I realized that this guy was a real Upper Cross
Speaker 2: Italian and the people that came to our opening included
Speaker 2: the chairman of FIAT, Johnny Agnelli, and contested this. I
Speaker 2: was like, boy, these are the kind of people that
Speaker 2: could be targets Revygae. There could be some kneecapt candidates here.
Speaker 2: But but essentially we just went on me and Lee
Speaker 2: Man late at night, wandering the streets of Rome. Of course,
Speaker 2: I had my boombox with me. I'm blasting early rap
Speaker 2: tapes and we just would wander the streets of Rome.
Speaker 2: Turn a corner there's, oh, there's remnants of a monument,
Speaker 2: and you walked through the city of Rome. So we
Speaker 2: just had a delight. We climbed over a fence of
Speaker 2: the coliseum and sat on the last remaining steps in
Speaker 2: the coliseum, which was like two kids from New York City,
Speaker 2: just what are we doing here. At that time, there
Speaker 2: were feral cats, hundreds of them that ran all over
Speaker 2: the Colisseum in Rome. I ran into Fellini on the
Speaker 2: street Rico Fellini lived. We were staying in what's called
Speaker 2: the Penzi, which was like a super cheap joint, and
Speaker 2: our dealer lived in this area on Via Margutta, and
Speaker 2: Fellini lived up the street and so helped me. I'm
Speaker 2: walking in the street and there's mister Fellini. I stopped.
Speaker 2: I chatted with him briefly. He had the classic hat on.
Speaker 2: And so is it like a pretty memorable What is
Speaker 2: it about you that has no fear?
Speaker 1: Because even in your book you are speaking of like
Speaker 1: I live in an era of New York where it
Speaker 1: has to be something worth it to get on the train.
Speaker 1: And now you know Manhattan, people are like, I don't
Speaker 1: do Brooklyn, I don't do Queens. I'll be like, yo,
Speaker 1: there's mad restaurants and queens. Let's go to Queens one night. Literally,
Speaker 1: you are the embodiment of like when people ask me, like,
Speaker 1: what's your advice or whatever, it's very simple, show up,
Speaker 1: see what happened. Show up, and you'll be shocked at
Speaker 1: the amount of time where people talk themselves out of
Speaker 1: their destiny because they've already painted their head. Nah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. Something might happen, like because
Speaker 1: in my mind, I'm like, you're from real New York.
Speaker 1: I'm in now, a pampered New York. And even then,
Speaker 1: you know, my first thought is who are all going to
Speaker 1: be there?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm good. No, but I'm saying, like you one,
Speaker 1: you're an army of one. So was there never not
Speaker 1: a concern I should find out about this neighborhood I'm
Speaker 1: going to before.
Speaker 2: Come on and that. Well, regarding that moving through the city,
Speaker 2: definitely you had to be away and caution. So my
Speaker 2: street senses with kicking, like even though I was reading
Speaker 2: and had like an intelligent nerd side to me coach
Speaker 2: whim with the best of the worst in the hood,
Speaker 2: like my parents didn't take it their respect, just being real,
Speaker 2: like if you had to knuckle up, I was ready,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. You know, I got bullied,
Speaker 2: like a lot of kids did. But at a certain
Speaker 2: point kid bullying me, I just called turned off and
Speaker 2: knocked his head off, knocked his block. Everybody went crazy,
Speaker 2: and that at least would let people know like, yo,
Speaker 2: you don't mess with him, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So I was able to move with some kids that
Speaker 2: was pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Did you have cousins or brothers or anything.
Speaker 2: No, I was the only child for most of that time.
Speaker 2: I have a younger sister, but you know, but.
Speaker 1: Nothing strikes to fear in someone, especially in the seventies, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get my brother fuck you up.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, nah that was real, But like I just
Speaker 2: navigated it in a way. You learned. You got bullied,
Speaker 2: you got picked on, but you learned the haul off
Speaker 2: and knock a kid upside his head and other kids realize, Yo,
Speaker 2: you don't want to mess with him because he'll knuckle up.
Speaker 2: And so you get a certain level of respect at
Speaker 2: that level, like on some jungle shit. And then you know,
Speaker 2: we would travel I'm from the era like where we
Speaker 2: would hitch busses, we ride the back of butt We
Speaker 2: did wild crazy shit, and my era I did. I
Speaker 2: put my feet in those waters to a certain extent.
Speaker 2: So when we travel through certain areas of Brooklyn to
Speaker 2: go to swimming pools, and like in Red Hook or
Speaker 2: wherever we was going, some neighborhoods you'd move through, cats
Speaker 2: would step to you and be like, Yo, what's up?
Speaker 2: You know? All right? Well fight so and so over
Speaker 2: here you had to. Yeah, it'd be crazy. Wait what yeah,
Speaker 2: like you come us out you got Sometimes you be
Speaker 2: in a rough neighborhood, kids will step to you, be
Speaker 2: so so understanding what a rough neighborhood is. Sometime if
Speaker 2: you move in. You come to a corner, you look
Speaker 2: down a block, but yo, it's just just it looked
Speaker 2: wild over here. Or you wouldn't go through projects unless
Speaker 2: you really knew somebody like a housing project, you'd navigate
Speaker 2: around there. So your instincts would get developed to a
Speaker 2: certain point where you can feel an energy when you
Speaker 2: come to a certain location. That's New York, especially in
Speaker 2: the summer. Heads are gonna be out and they're gonna
Speaker 2: be on a stoop. They're gonna be in the parks,
Speaker 2: and you can feel that. So you would avoid certain
Speaker 2: where would.
Speaker 1: You never go in nineteen seventies New York?
Speaker 2: Like I said, if you knew it was crazy over here,
Speaker 2: you had to move with a certain level of caution.
Speaker 2: You know. That's how it was.
Speaker 1: Is there a certain New York that you would I'm good.
Speaker 2: Certain parts of Brownsville it was roughs for green would
Speaker 2: be kind of rough. You know. If you in certain
Speaker 2: areas in them hoods, dudes would step to you because
Speaker 2: you know, they'd be like, yo, what you're doing around here?
Speaker 2: Like what's up? Yo? These kids don't look you know,
Speaker 2: they whatever what's happening. So you find a lot of
Speaker 2: early beefs with stem from just being in the wrong
Speaker 2: part of town, or if you was dating a girl
Speaker 2: or the chick lived here, that could be problematic. You know,
Speaker 2: it's ignorant stuff when you grow up a little bit,
Speaker 2: but you know, you learn how to navigate, how to
Speaker 2: make moves, where to go and where not to go.
Speaker 2: That was New York back then because you know, actually
Speaker 2: people didn't move travel too much out of their particular
Speaker 2: safe zones, and if you did, you move with a
Speaker 2: certain Listen. The stick up kid thing was real, and
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn that was a major occupation, like a hustle,
Speaker 2: like I've directed. One of the many videos I directed
Speaker 2: was for Gang Star or just to Get a Rep,
Speaker 2: which was all about that stick up kid. You know
Speaker 2: when rock Kim, one of his early record turns stick
Speaker 2: you know on the message turn stick up kid, look
Speaker 2: what yeah God sent up for. This was a thing.
Speaker 2: So you had to know how to move because they'd
Speaker 2: be waiting for you at certain places, like when kids
Speaker 2: had their summer jobs and you get paid. Everybody got paid.
Speaker 2: On a certain day, your stick up kids would be out.
Speaker 2: You'd be going to the Lancey Street, you know, to
Speaker 2: get it in our fit stick up kids to be there. YO,
Speaker 2: give me all that run it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: You know that mop energy completely encapsulated what it was
Speaker 2: like when I hear that, you know, those certain records,
Speaker 2: certain rappers was able to really encapsulate what it was
Speaker 2: at those times, and you just had to learn how
Speaker 2: to navigate that or to deal with it, you know,
Speaker 2: and you have to knuckle up.
Speaker 1: What was your household record collection?
Speaker 2: Like, well, my parents had. That's an interesting story which
Speaker 2: I also talk about in the book. So my parents
Speaker 2: had a bunch of album not a massive amount, but
Speaker 2: it was a lot of jazz records. And as a
Speaker 2: young kid, I'm so sad about this. I destroyed a
Speaker 2: lot of the collection trying to stack the albums up
Speaker 2: in interesting ways, building things. Records would roll out of
Speaker 2: the covers and be you know, you know, so those
Speaker 2: things I damaged a bunch of records. But so those
Speaker 2: are the records that were in the house. Primarily my
Speaker 2: mom would be into a lot of the contemporary stuff,
Speaker 2: which would primarily be on forty fives. So you'd have
Speaker 2: the classic scenario, which I've been explaining a lot as
Speaker 2: I've been on a book tour. Before the idea of
Speaker 2: a DJ mixing, which was just before hip hop, way
Speaker 2: before hip hop. Just the idea of keeping the music
Speaker 2: going was a huge innovation and a revelation because typically
Speaker 2: you put a stack of forty fives on the spindle,
Speaker 2: the arm would swing back, it would drop a record,
Speaker 2: the armoud play the record, the shuffle the okay, the
Speaker 2: original shuffle. That's how parties were, that's how you listen
Speaker 2: to music. That's how music was enjoyed in the home.
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, so my mom had some of the
Speaker 2: contemporary stuff, and she would give me fifteen twenty cent
Speaker 2: a quarter to show her the latest dances, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever the come.
Speaker 1: On, what are you.
Speaker 2: You know? Yeah, do the wobble, do the whatever, the
Speaker 2: jerk whatever, you know.
Speaker 1: So I would use the entertainment. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But so basically my mom was into that. And one
Speaker 2: of the earliest records that I remember that I went
Speaker 2: because I damaged your copy my mother owned was a
Speaker 2: record called The Name Game by Shirley Ellis Yes, which
Speaker 2: is sort of to me like an early rap record,
Speaker 2: if you will, because she's pretty much just talking with
Speaker 2: along with.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, you are right. I never thought of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when later when youre hip hop and and
Speaker 2: so that I remember I was playing with a ball
Speaker 2: that bounced up on the turntable scratched the record, and
Speaker 2: a little record store around the corner from us right
Speaker 2: then on Sumner Avenue which is now Marcus Garvey, a
Speaker 2: little small record store. I went and brought a copy,
Speaker 2: and that was actually turned out to be the first
Speaker 2: record I would podcast. But as a young adult or
Speaker 2: a teenager, growing into my adult years, I always was
Speaker 2: a boombox guy with a double cassette.
Speaker 1: When you mentioned that, I totally forgot about Corniac boom Kannac.
Speaker 1: I forget the name of the company, but like that
Speaker 1: boombox culture. Can you so can you explain because it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to convey the people how we took
Speaker 1: in music right now, of course, my entire record collection
Speaker 1: can be on the phone name here.
Speaker 2: It's crazy where technology has gotten us. But I was
Speaker 2: a cassette guy primarily because you know, you can make
Speaker 2: a copy, and if you had somebody had something special,
Speaker 2: you can burn and run a copy on your double cassette.
Speaker 2: So that's really was instrumental and how hip hop really
Speaker 2: spread around the city. It was cassettes being handed and
Speaker 2: being dubbed and copied whatever. But I was always a
Speaker 2: boombox guy for quite a while. In fact, one of
Speaker 2: the last boomboxes I had I donated to the Smithsonian.
Speaker 2: It literally is on exhibit, not the Afro Smithsonian. It
Speaker 2: was donated for that purpose, but they actually because it
Speaker 2: was way before they finished the building, so it's in
Speaker 2: the American smith If you google fab five Freddy's Boombox Smithsonian,
Speaker 2: you'll see my boom box. But some guys, now I
Speaker 2: don't remember the name, that have a Kickstarter going on
Speaker 2: with the classic massive Boom double cassette. But it's also
Speaker 2: got bluetooth CD USB. It has that old school boombox.
Speaker 1: Look, Chapelle hooked me up one of those Chappelle knows
Speaker 1: those guys, and that was my Christmas.
Speaker 2: I have that thing. Well it's I just ordered one.
Speaker 2: So I'm patiently waiting because I still got a lot
Speaker 2: of cassettes and stuff. A lot of my stuff went
Speaker 2: to the Schomberg and Harlem a lot of my stuff,
Speaker 2: but I still have so Boom. But I still have
Speaker 2: a lot of cassettes that I need to dive into.
Speaker 1: So back then, before the Giuliani era of anti noise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it was just anti everything. It was well
Speaker 2: yeah you down.
Speaker 1: But like it was just you could freely just walk
Speaker 1: around and blast your shit onto you listen.
Speaker 2: That was that was That was what it was man,
Speaker 2: you know. And this the boom boxes got bigger, better
Speaker 2: and sounded better have to put up. I remember cruiser
Speaker 2: cats that wanted to really walk around and listen to
Speaker 2: some music, you know, you know like a The Ladies whatever.
Speaker 2: You had to cast the crew with chipping to put
Speaker 2: the batteries in because you had to put them D
Speaker 2: sized batteries in and them big boxes was they was heavy,
Speaker 2: But that was the move back then. Like I can
Speaker 2: even remember before the cassettes. I remember casting had eight track.
Speaker 2: There was quartable eight track boomboxes. I didn't have that,
Speaker 2: but I remember seeing them is eight track thing, which
Speaker 2: was weird, but that was the move back then.
Speaker 1: And then what would you rock like what was like
Speaker 1: your number one tester, like you just curate tapes the
Speaker 1: night before and then make your soundtrack worse well, for me,
Speaker 1: when it really got going good, you would have if
Speaker 1: man like recording Red Alert Show even before Red Alert
Speaker 1: and Magic was on mainstream stations.
Speaker 2: There was a station called WHBI, which was sort of no.
Speaker 2: WHBI was a New York City station. It was a
Speaker 2: community connection where you could pay if you got a
Speaker 2: good slot, you'd pay, like to get on fifty sixty dollars,
Speaker 2: which is what it costed. You pay them, and you
Speaker 2: could broadcast. So the Supreme Team was the ones that
Speaker 2: was playing early breakbeats and early rap records, and you
Speaker 2: could go on YouTube and hear examples of what they
Speaker 2: would do. I'll have my fresh tape ready to record,
Speaker 2: you know when the Supreme Team came. That's how you
Speaker 2: got access to the music they was playing.
Speaker 1: The real have some of those tapes. So you're telling
Speaker 1: me that because in my mind, I'm like, wow, like
Speaker 1: radio programmers, I'm thinking like Frankie Crocker is like paving
Speaker 1: away for these DJs to get on. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that that's community radio, community radio. So the character that
Speaker 1: Sam Jackson played and do the Right Thing, hm, that
Speaker 1: was an actual thing where it's like a community radio station.
Speaker 2: For Yes, they had them. They had Yes, that's Sam
Speaker 2: Jackson and do the Right Thing, Senior Loved Senior Love Daddy. Yes,
Speaker 2: that was that would go on but also on the
Speaker 2: weekends on b Less and Kiss they would have master
Speaker 2: mixed shows where they would just let the music go
Speaker 2: for long stretches uninterrupted. They would do a commercial break
Speaker 2: or two. If you would slick with it, you would
Speaker 2: pause and then you'd come back in, so you'd cut
Speaker 2: out all the talk and the gibberish. But that was
Speaker 2: the key way you got hot music that wasn't in
Speaker 2: the regular playlist or the regular top whatever. However, they
Speaker 2: broke it down, So that was it for me.
Speaker 1: Can you name me three live shows that you witnessed
Speaker 1: in your early fourteen years? In your life, how often
Speaker 1: did you go to contract shows?
Speaker 2: Oh? Boy, not too often. But the first time I
Speaker 2: go to a concert in the seventies on my own,
Speaker 2: it would slid in the family stuff. Okay. I loved
Speaker 2: your documentary by the Way Back Way, and that was
Speaker 2: great because taught me a lot about Slider. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize he was on the radio and had
Speaker 2: been super impactful in that category, which explained a lot.
Speaker 2: Going to see him was huge. Not much long after
Speaker 2: going to see Parliament Funk of Delic when they would
Speaker 2: come to the garden, those were huge events. I had tickets.
Speaker 2: I'm way up in the nosebleeds, but I loved it.
Speaker 2: It was incredible. So seeing Sliding family Stone, you know,
Speaker 2: the Parliament, Funk of Deelic, those were huge, memorable shows.
Speaker 2: I remember there was a summer concert series in Central
Speaker 2: Park that I went to. I was in Central Park
Speaker 2: when Dinass I was there for that. I was there
Speaker 2: both days. So the first one went crazy. Look, I'm
Speaker 2: from Brooklyn. It was Brooklyn that went bananas that day.
Speaker 2: Kind of embarrassing, but tore that shit up. Then it
Speaker 2: rained and then they read. Then they did some miraculous
Speaker 2: let's do it the next day, and I was back
Speaker 2: there again for that. I was that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go because I swore Michael Jackson was
Speaker 1: going to show up.
Speaker 2: You can't go. That was epics. So I've seen some
Speaker 2: good shows, man, definitely a few, a few of them.
Speaker 1: So of all of the stories that you've well, I
Speaker 1: guess I could say great stories of the adults in
Speaker 1: your life. And you talk about your your father's inner circle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is the one that impacted you the most because
Speaker 1: you carry a lot of the history. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I was so mind blown. You go into the craziest
Speaker 1: detail of your father's witnessing Malcolm X's assassination, And are
Speaker 1: you the only one that has a cassette recording of
Speaker 1: that actual.
Speaker 2: Assass real to real that went that real to real tape.
Speaker 2: So one of my dad's closest friends was this gentleman
Speaker 2: actually a drummer, but he kind of retired from drummer
Speaker 2: became a full time activist. Name was Willie Jones. He
Speaker 2: recorded on a felonious monk date Friday to thirteenth, most famously,
Speaker 2: and then he became like a community activist and he
Speaker 2: got tight with Malcolm to the extent where he had
Speaker 2: a portable reel to reel that would he would go
Speaker 2: to all of Malcolm's New York rallies. He would have
Speaker 2: his recorder set up he would record. So that fateful day,
Speaker 2: my dad, Willie and another one of their friends were
Speaker 2: at the Autobomb ballroom. WILLI had his mic on the
Speaker 2: pedestal and when the shots open up, he recorded everything.
Speaker 2: So we heard that it was a gentleman I can't
Speaker 2: remember his name that within the last ten years or
Speaker 2: so wrote a Malcolm X bio if you will, or
Speaker 2: a book about Malcolm and the way he recounts that incident.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he had access to the tape because that
Speaker 2: tape was my dad. Yeah. Well, they made copies for
Speaker 2: their friends and so it was kind of circulated. But
Speaker 2: the copy I have is one of the original dupes,
Speaker 2: if you will, went with my stuff to the shamreg
Speaker 2: I don't know if they ever did the whole baked
Speaker 2: the tape to make sure they preserved everything in the
Speaker 2: correct way, but yeah, you know, my dad and then
Speaker 2: would recount that numerous times and it'd be.
Speaker 1: Chilling, like how old were you at the time. It's
Speaker 1: sixty five, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm like, I don't remember it because I'm
Speaker 2: real little, but they would tell the story. I would
Speaker 2: hear the tape they would put on the tape. They
Speaker 2: had numerous tapes of Malcolm's speeches that really had recorded,
Speaker 2: and so they were like really following in fact, one
Speaker 2: of the speeches Malcolm had gave prior he spoke. But
Speaker 2: because you know, they had tried to fire bomb his
Speaker 2: house and queens, there's the famous image of Malcolm holding
Speaker 2: the peeking out of the window. Because that shot was
Speaker 2: about him protecting his family. He knew he was being targeted.
Speaker 2: There was a speech where my dad and them would
Speaker 2: play a recording where he would mention something to the
Speaker 2: effect that I know I might not be here, something
Speaker 2: kind of he knew they were on him, but he
Speaker 2: still was so courageous. He kept going, he kept speaking.
Speaker 2: And so that faithful day when that happened, and my
Speaker 2: dad and them would tell that story. I heard it
Speaker 2: dozens of times over the years, and then it was
Speaker 2: a famous part, like when they ran up on stage
Speaker 2: and then they ran backstage, and then Willie was peeping
Speaker 2: through a hole. My dad said, that's likely a bullet hole.
Speaker 2: Will he stepped back, and it was just craziness. In
Speaker 2: the recent Netflix documentary Who Killed Malcolm X, I'm looking,
Speaker 2: I did actually not in that dock, but I did
Speaker 2: find literally I think it's the day before. I did
Speaker 2: find footage of Malcolm outside of the Hotel Teresa building,
Speaker 2: Willie Jones right behind him. What you could see. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've got the photo with the tape deck on his shoulder.
Speaker 2: But just hearing about that relentlessly, it was just such
Speaker 2: a sad And I also want to point out, like
Speaker 2: it's Malcolm. At that time, in most mainstream press, he
Speaker 2: was dragged. I mean, he was not as universally accepted
Speaker 2: and acknowledge as he is now among black folks as well,
Speaker 2: because he came off real edgy at the time, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean by the conservative Yeah, so really,
Speaker 2: you know, really super duper cautious about how to move.
Speaker 2: You know, black folks weren't even comfortable being black. It
Speaker 2: was still negroing and kind of colored at that time
Speaker 2: when I'm really young. But Malcolm definitely has been proven
Speaker 2: to be right on so many topics and so many
Speaker 2: categories of things that he focused on and things that
Speaker 2: he was about in terms of what he said. You know,
Speaker 2: we hear those things echoing now in our timelines if
Speaker 2: your algorithm is in the right space and place. Yes,
Speaker 2: So those things were just echo throughout my childhood among
Speaker 2: my dad and his friends.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Willie playing for Felonious. You gotta tell me
Speaker 1: the story. What made you want to cold call Felonious monk? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I did, oh man. You know, well, it starts with
Speaker 2: I guess being around my dad and his friends. They'd
Speaker 2: be playing jazz often recounting stories and the fact that
Speaker 2: they would know who these musicians were just from hearing
Speaker 2: them play was fascinating to me. How do you know
Speaker 2: that's Sonny Rollins And how do you know that's you know,
Speaker 2: Mary Lou Williams or who these musicians are was fascinating
Speaker 2: to me just without hearing a voice. And then later
Speaker 2: the first musician that I was able to spot was
Speaker 2: Monk and it's the very powerful, seemingly simple way he plays,
Speaker 2: but at the same time it was very stink to
Speaker 2: my ear, and I was like, I remember the first time,
Speaker 2: was like, that's Monk, and they would be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's Monk. So I was like, man, you.
Speaker 1: Never have musical aspirations because you're around all this jazz.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I thought I wanted to be a drummer as a kid.
Speaker 2: Max gave me like a little really unique practice kit
Speaker 2: that opened up and had these pads that swung out
Speaker 2: of a briefcase and would sort of replicate what the different. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some somebody in Europe had given it to him. He
Speaker 2: gave it to me. That didn't work out. I didn't
Speaker 2: I didn't do whatever is it?
Speaker 1: I wish I knew, Come on, friend, stop playing, just
Speaker 1: say that to a master drummer.
Speaker 2: But that was single digit. Yeah, that didn't work out.
Speaker 1: So, so you you cold called him?
Speaker 2: And yeah, so I'm looking through my dad's phone book.
Speaker 1: What made you want to call him?
Speaker 2: Because I liked the music and I was I developed
Speaker 2: this thing about Monk. I was the first musician who
Speaker 2: sound I could distinguish on the radio when my dad
Speaker 2: like the way my dad and his friends, that's so
Speaker 2: and so, Oh that's mngus, that's the how do you guys,
Speaker 2: how do you do that? So literally, Monk's sound became
Speaker 2: super distinctive to me. So it became like this Monk.
Speaker 2: I like Monk. I like Monk, And I'm flipping through
Speaker 2: my dad's phone book and there's Monk's name in the
Speaker 2: loneus Monk. So I said, man, let me call the number.
Speaker 2: And I wanted to talk to Monk, but his wife
Speaker 2: answered to phone Nelly and I just had this incredible
Speaker 2: conversation with Nelly. Thinking back as an adult, she hears
Speaker 2: the voice of a young kid on the phone. She
Speaker 2: was like, oh, how sweet is this? But what really
Speaker 2: stayed with me is the fact that I was talking
Speaker 2: about jazz and she said, well, Freddy, jazz is like
Speaker 2: a conversation which starts off with a topic being stated
Speaker 2: and the other musicians are giving their interpretation or interpolation
Speaker 2: of that topic. And that helped me understand so much
Speaker 2: because you know, particularly in bebop jazz, they state this
Speaker 2: statement in the beginning and then the other cats do
Speaker 2: their response and interpretation of that, and it was like wow,
Speaker 2: and it helped me understand. I would later actually meet
Speaker 2: Nelly in the late nineties early two thousands, and I
Speaker 2: reminded her about the call, and then I have been
Speaker 2: fascinated about the baroness who my dad and his friends
Speaker 2: would also talk about. This was a roth child heiress,
Speaker 2: a patron of jazz. She would be around, Yeah, she
Speaker 2: would help many musicians. She had incredible taste. They respected
Speaker 2: her so heavily because she could hear the way they heard.
Speaker 2: Like if some cats were jamming, she'd be like, Oh,
Speaker 2: that piano player, he's a motherfucker, and the cats would
Speaker 2: be like, he's the one.
Speaker 1: So every area of our music has that person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was fascinating because my dad this is
Speaker 2: one of the stories that would come up often. She'd
Speaker 2: have a Rose Royce parked outside until five six in
Speaker 2: the morning. So she was a patron to Monk loved
Speaker 2: Monk helped the family in bad times when these guys
Speaker 2: weren't able to eat. She was close with our Blakey
Speaker 2: the Drummer. But Charlie Parker literally dies in her hotel
Speaker 2: suite at the Stanhope Hotel. She was helping out. She
Speaker 2: would help cats out in a true patronly way, and
Speaker 2: so she was revered. There were numerous songs named after her.
Speaker 2: One of Monk's tunes after I think it's called Crepsicle
Speaker 2: for Nelly if you check out Nellie the Rothschild. So
Speaker 2: that was a story that I'd hear a lot about.
Speaker 2: And then later when i'd get on the downtown scene
Speaker 2: and I'd meet different women that were just supportive and
Speaker 2: instinctive and understood it and got it, I'd say, you know,
Speaker 2: you might be something like this woman. I'd hear Nelly, and.
Speaker 1: She right about Monk having distinctive style like my dad
Speaker 1: and I often didn't see eye to eye on a
Speaker 1: lot of hip hop. Huh. But for some reason, the
Speaker 1: last time we had a bonding, he recognized like, this
Speaker 1: is the only time where he put me onto something.
Speaker 1: In November, when Wu Tang's thirty six Chambers came out
Speaker 1: the same day as Midnight Marauders and I'm listening to that.
Speaker 1: I'm about to go to New York to get my
Speaker 1: record deal, and I'm playing Wu Tang shame on the
Speaker 1: nigga was on. He was like, that's the loneiest monk.
Speaker 1: And then Clanning the funk came on. He's like, that's
Speaker 1: the loneiest monk, and he was like, are these kids
Speaker 1: at the loneiest monk or whatever? But and at first
Speaker 1: I was like, you don't know. Later I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: Dad was right, that is the loneiest monk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: So you know, unfortunately, I guess I'm part of the
Speaker 1: well not intentionally gentrification part of New York. Literally my
Speaker 1: first day in New York was like every real news complaint,
Speaker 1: like the last day. It was December of ninety three,
Speaker 1: and this is literally the day in which I guess
Speaker 1: forty second Street was open for business as far as
Speaker 1: the disnification of it all. So me arriving in New
Speaker 1: York literally all week was just anger and disdaining in
Speaker 1: the air. Like I'm staying in the Paramount on forty
Speaker 1: sixth Streets, so I'm in like midtown Manhattan, but all
Speaker 1: I hear is that people are bitching because like, man,
Speaker 1: forty second Street ain't the same. No more is Disney
Speaker 1: and Starbucks is here. Like this is when I'm first
Speaker 1: starting to hear complaints of the old. But I think
Speaker 1: that is a cycle. So like I always hear the
Speaker 1: before your time, this is what New York was. And
Speaker 1: I've heard, you know, I've heard stories of people in
Speaker 1: the fifties say that, No, the real jazz renaissance was
Speaker 1: in the early late thirties and early forties, and people
Speaker 1: in the seventies be like, man, sixties was the shit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So for you becoming a teenage, you're in the seventies,
Speaker 1: what was the shift that you first noticed happening in
Speaker 1: New York? Because you paint a pretty fair I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say rosy or rose colored glasses, but I
Speaker 1: know of eras where the projects weren't seen as a
Speaker 1: mark of shame, or you wanted to visit your aunt
Speaker 1: uncle Nat and oh, I'm gonna go to the projects.
Speaker 1: But in the eighties you wouldn't dare do that. So
Speaker 1: what happened in the seventies that you observed that didn't
Speaker 1: cross over, Like what things that were noticeable in the
Speaker 1: sixties that you didn't see come the seventies.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, let me make sure I got this right.
Speaker 1: In terms of well, just in terms of culture, your
Speaker 1: observation of New York well, h and I know it
Speaker 1: might be hard for you to take an observation if
Speaker 1: you're inside it. Yeah, were the seventies all that different
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: I can remember the beginnings of not even so much
Speaker 2: bedsty because I guess when I was really young, I
Speaker 2: went to a tutor in downtown Brooklyn what would be
Speaker 2: considered the Fort Green area when the whole renovating of
Speaker 2: brownstones happened. That created this awareness of the quality of
Speaker 2: these homes when people began to start renovating them, and
Speaker 2: I guess that would set the table for gentrification down
Speaker 2: the line, if.
Speaker 1: You will sell your house for a million dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that didn't, like I said, some parts of
Speaker 2: Fort Green. And then even further I remember like Brooklyn
Speaker 2: Heights because as a young kid, I was really curious
Speaker 2: about architecture. I would be looking at different periodicals and
Speaker 2: reading things that related to buildings, and I became aware that,
Speaker 2: you know, and then I remember this like brownstone renovation
Speaker 2: thing happening back then and that hit my radar. People
Speaker 2: stripping the plaster and having exposed brick and refinishing the wood,
Speaker 2: and our the wood in our house was all painted.
Speaker 2: Then when I was like, wait a minute, our house
Speaker 2: had wood, liked it? Why did they paint it? Like
Speaker 2: I like, you know, it became aware of what it
Speaker 2: had been. Having grown up in a brownstone in Bedsty,
Speaker 2: that was somewhat of an awareness that things were changing.
Speaker 2: And then when you look down the line as the
Speaker 2: prices went way up through the roof in different areas
Speaker 2: that now is going on in Bedsty. You know, luckily
Speaker 2: we still own the house. You still own your Yeah,
Speaker 2: me and my sister, but she lives in it with
Speaker 2: her family in bed Style, So that's a blessing. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's really what I learned watching gentrification happen in various
Speaker 2: areas in New York City, particularly watching that happen in
Speaker 2: the Lower East Side where I lived when I made
Speaker 2: my move into Manhattan to really get things moving and grooving.
Speaker 2: That became like a big kind of line in the sands,
Speaker 2: so to speak. That activists were like, here's what they
Speaker 2: want to do, here's what they're coming and the rents
Speaker 2: are going to be this literally the block I lived
Speaker 2: on that I talk about a lot in my memoir
Speaker 2: Ludlow Street. There's high rises that have been recently built
Speaker 2: on Ludlow Street amidst tenements built for the poorest immigrant
Speaker 2: New Yorkers. So a lot of the stuff that they
Speaker 2: would talk about back then that I thought was so
Speaker 2: extreme and exaggerated has come to fruition. So but seeing
Speaker 2: that the way it transpired and following artists initially, who
Speaker 2: are the people that would go into these areas and
Speaker 2: set up shop what literally first happened in Soho Tribeca,
Speaker 2: Lower east Side. I was connected like to those pioneers,
Speaker 2: if you will, like particularly in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 2: And then when it got crazy based on the energy
Speaker 2: that the creative community create, like we made it cool,
Speaker 2: we made it sexy, we made it interesting. Then the
Speaker 2: developers come in and buy it all up. And unless
Speaker 2: you own something, you really don't benefit. You gotta go
Speaker 2: once that lease is up. Is it a fight to
Speaker 2: the finish to hang on to your history. And I mean,
Speaker 2: if you own something, it's the only way you can
Speaker 2: kind of survive it. And then you kind of somewhat
Speaker 2: benefit because the value of your property goes up. But
Speaker 2: watching that happen, particularly in the Lower East Side, when
Speaker 2: they were selling drugs super duper, ultra flagrantly. I'm talking
Speaker 2: heroin and cocaine in the streets broad daylight, like it
Speaker 2: was a farmer's market. In certain areas in Alphabst City,
Speaker 2: like Avenue C Avenue D, it was edgy to see
Speaker 2: the real estate people watch for artists to move into
Speaker 2: those areas, watch for galleries to open up to support
Speaker 2: artists like what we were doing. They would be now
Speaker 2: it's time to buy and they would buy up the
Speaker 2: property that was completely like decrepit, and now that became
Speaker 2: the high rent district, if you will.
Speaker 1: It's crazy to say that because if you say alphabet City, now,
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, some of the greatest record stores, some
Speaker 1: of the best homakazi sushi ever had. Yeah, I missed
Speaker 1: an era from the outside. Looking at the outside, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a Philadelphia you know, I was force fed the
Speaker 1: history of hip hop in the Bronx, hip hop in
Speaker 1: the Bronx and the Bronx and the Bronx and the
Speaker 1: Bronx and Bronx. But you know, I know that this
Speaker 1: culture is also developing in other boroughs as well. Correct,
Speaker 1: what were your earliest hip hop experiences in Brooklyn?
Speaker 2: Sure? So before it's hip hop, and I had to
Speaker 2: hand it that it was these mobile basically disco DJs.
Speaker 2: This begins from I mean, they probably go back to
Speaker 2: the late sixties, but as a young shorty I got
Speaker 2: to experience them coming to the parks or block parties
Speaker 2: in Bedstock and these were the guys that made being
Speaker 2: a DJ cool. Just they weren't cutting, scratching, nobody was
Speaker 2: really rapping, but just keeping the music going continually was
Speaker 2: a huge innovation. And the better of those guys could
Speaker 2: blend records that kind of almost connected and keep a
Speaker 2: groove going, you know, BPM, beats, permnt and all that
Speaker 2: stuff we'd learned about later. And so some of the
Speaker 2: people that I remembered that resonated was in my area
Speaker 2: Bedstot was Frankie D. It was Master D who later
Speaker 2: became DJ Lance Rest in Peace. It was Pete, DJ Jones,
Speaker 2: DJ Plumber, me Boya and Queens. It was people like
Speaker 2: Infinity Machine, you know, the disco twins. These guys had
Speaker 2: massive sound systems, speakers, turntables, a mixer, crates of records,
Speaker 2: and they'd come out and just they were the rock
Speaker 2: stars in the community that really fueled what became the
Speaker 2: disco boom. Okay, this is before Saturday Night Fever, before
Speaker 2: Studio fifty four. This was where it all comes from.
Speaker 2: And who helped pushed us into the mainstream was Frankie Krocker,
Speaker 2: the DJ and program director of WBLS, who had his
Speaker 2: ear tapped in to these DJs, and when he saw
Speaker 2: the crowd respond to whatever they were playing, he would
Speaker 2: program that and spend that on BLS regardless of what
Speaker 2: was on the chart. He didn't follow the chart. He
Speaker 2: followed his ears and he was in the man in
Speaker 2: control and that lit a fuse that set off a
Speaker 2: move throughout the city. This was where energy was coming
Speaker 2: from these DJs and then these parties. They would eventually
Speaker 2: like rent out restaurants in Midtown during a bad economic
Speaker 2: time in the city, and then they would promote these
Speaker 2: parties on BLS. Places like Nel Gwan's Riverbow Cafe, Nemo's
Speaker 2: Superstar Caf Nemos or whatever. These are places i'd hear about.
Speaker 2: I didn't have the money. I'm still like a young teen,
Speaker 2: but I'm aware of what this is going on. So
Speaker 2: this was the spark that inspired Cool Herk to do
Speaker 2: what he did and other DJs around the city. Yes,
Speaker 2: this is how it goes down. There's a misnoma that
Speaker 2: just because Cool Herk is from Jamaica, keep in mind
Speaker 2: he's about twelve or so years old when he immigrates
Speaker 2: to the city, that because there's this incredible dance hall
Speaker 2: reggae scene that goes on. What's even more interesting is
Speaker 2: that these two forms of dang if you will, are
Speaker 2: developed independent of each other, not aware of each other,
Speaker 2: but from similar inspiration, which were the black radio jocks
Speaker 2: in Jamaica. When the weather is right, they can catch
Speaker 2: the black radio jock in New Orleans or maybe somebody
Speaker 2: that had a late night show in Florida, and they
Speaker 2: were sort of emulating that idea of the deep. Matter
Speaker 2: of fact, keep in mind, that's the original disc jockey,
Speaker 2: is the guy playing music on the radio talking a
Speaker 2: little slick patter. JACKO, well, Jocko of course is a
Speaker 2: great example. But what's the brother on Sacks Records that
Speaker 2: did the was it Rufus Thomas.
Speaker 1: Yes, he was a.
Speaker 2: Radio guy, super popular as sly Stone. So these are
Speaker 2: the guys in the black community that would get a
Speaker 2: Oftentimes it'd be a late night radio slot that did
Speaker 2: talk that slick, jazzy patter with rhyming a little bit
Speaker 2: here and there. Frankie Kraker came out of that whole
Speaker 2: thing as well. Also in New York it was WWRRAL
Speaker 2: with people like Hank Span and these guys that talk
Speaker 2: real slick and groovy. Those were the initial inspirations for
Speaker 2: the idea of being a DJ. Keep controlling that music
Speaker 2: and then the whole pattern are talking. Initially, the first
Speaker 2: talking on the mic at these local parties was promoting
Speaker 2: who the DJ was. You know, Flash will tell you
Speaker 2: he just set up a mic stand and I think
Speaker 2: it was Kid Creole that got on the mic first,
Speaker 2: and then you know, Mellie mel and Cowboy and the
Speaker 2: rest would come in.
Speaker 1: And then they.
Speaker 2: Developed cool things to say on the mic, But it
Speaker 2: was all about the DJ initially. So I witnessed all
Speaker 2: of that transpired. This was some of the stuff.
Speaker 1: If you want, how would you know something was happening.
Speaker 2: Oh, we'd be a I remember on certain summer nights,
Speaker 2: man and sitting on the student When it got quiet enough,
Speaker 2: you might hear the rumble of some of the base
Speaker 2: bottoms and he'd be like, that was what we were
Speaker 2: talking in Brooklyn at that time. In best I was like, yo,
Speaker 2: where they jamming at? Yo, it's a jam at this park,
Speaker 2: forty four Park, Saint John's Park, Breevoid Projects. I hear
Speaker 2: there's a jam going on, we would be we would
Speaker 2: walk all over to these parks or the right block
Speaker 2: party to hear one of these hot mobile DJ's playing.
Speaker 2: And it was at one of these parties I think
Speaker 2: it might have been a Master d party when he
Speaker 2: put on something real different. A couple of cats dropped
Speaker 2: to the floor doing a semblance of breakdancing, and I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was Apatche, Bob James, Marty Grs.
Speaker 2: It was something that I was like, what is he playing?
Speaker 2: And I went up to DJ said Yo, what's that?
Speaker 2: And the cat the first inkling of something. He said, Yo,
Speaker 2: that's the uptown sound. But this is when you'd go
Speaker 2: up to the rope. DJ's was set up a rope
Speaker 2: around them playing. It would always be a crew of
Speaker 2: kids watching, like just standing at everything. These are all
Speaker 2: the kids that wanted to be DJ's. This one inspired
Speaker 2: early DJs to soak. They records so they could see
Speaker 2: you're because people like, yo, what's he playing? I never
Speaker 2: heard that? No way? Oh you know, was like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm soaking the label off of this final So you
Speaker 2: will never know, because that's part of what the attraction is.
Speaker 2: Only you will only hear this record and you go
Speaker 2: to this cat spinning anyway, dude said it's the uptown sound.
Speaker 2: Like I literally went, I got some of my homies
Speaker 2: off my block and we took the train up to
Speaker 2: up to Harlem and walked around asking cats where they
Speaker 2: jamming at. You know, we was just trying to find like,
Speaker 2: what's this uptown sound. I didn't know if it was
Speaker 2: uptown Manhattan or the Bronx, but I was obsessed. Just
Speaker 2: blindly went yes, yes, I like, what is this going on? Like, oh,
Speaker 2: y'all having jams uptown too?
Speaker 1: What did you discover?
Speaker 2: Nothing? So it was a minute. I didn't even connect
Speaker 2: with nobody. But ironically, as I detail in my book,
Speaker 2: when I connected with Lee kenyonis like I'm I'm asking, Yo,
Speaker 2: are you hip to these DJs? I hear these cats uptown?
Speaker 2: They doing something different? Oh yeah? And he I mean
Speaker 2: I probably had heard Flash his name by this point
Speaker 2: and I know a few colonels of info and Lee said,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, Yo, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Those cats have played at the community center at the
Speaker 2: base of these project. This is the Smith Projects in
Speaker 2: the Lower east Side, right at the base of the
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Bridge. I'm like, what. So. Literally a month or
Speaker 2: so later, Lee let me know that it was flashing
Speaker 2: and furious for this is seventy eight. I only need
Speaker 2: the seventy eight seventy nine, Lee says, Yo, They're gonna
Speaker 2: be playing at the right here in the community center
Speaker 2: this weekend. It was flashing and furious. For the fifth member,
Speaker 2: Raheem hadn't joined the group yet. And that's how I connect.
Speaker 2: I'm there at that party. I speak to Mellie man
Speaker 2: I said, Man, you ever think about making a record?
Speaker 2: He was like, who would buy it? That's what Melie
Speaker 2: Melo said to me, because it wasn't about records yet.
Speaker 2: These cats was getting three four hundred dollars for spending
Speaker 2: here there whatever. This was what it was at that time.
Speaker 1: How long would the party last?
Speaker 2: The party would be from you know, ten eleven to three, two,
Speaker 2: three four in the morning.
Speaker 1: You know, Now, I'll do a two to three hour set,
Speaker 1: and I'm already like it's about one hundred and eighty songs,
Speaker 1: but it's twenty twenty six. There's a whole history of
Speaker 1: music behind me. Yeah, but I'm trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: like in nineteen seventy eight, with just like a good
Speaker 1: quality maybe forty songs if you're lucky.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's like, how do you make shit last?
Speaker 1: And was there ever a law or well?
Speaker 2: Typically four o'clock was to cut off for most joints
Speaker 2: because in New York we got our liquor lore. It
Speaker 2: goes to four. Most places when I would begin to travel,
Speaker 2: it's over at two. But New York, I realized in
Speaker 2: one of the few cities I think, like New Orleans
Speaker 2: or Louisiana, things can go to four, which I was like, wow.
Speaker 2: But most other places everything was a rap at two.
Speaker 2: But typically a party would go to that time, I
Speaker 2: mean most of the most of it.
Speaker 1: What about noise ordinances, like when cops come in and
Speaker 1: be like, yo, it's.
Speaker 2: Too loud, or at a gymnasium, no, because it's like
Speaker 2: a contained area.
Speaker 1: I don't you have any you know, the sound was
Speaker 1: good to you? Like it felt like no.
Speaker 2: A lot of the sound at that time, the quality
Speaker 2: of a lot of the sound was bad.
Speaker 1: Finally someone tells me the truth. Oh god, Ama was crazy.
Speaker 2: We hadn't some guys talk ship, but I'd go to
Speaker 2: a lot of jams, and you know, Bronx guys initially
Speaker 2: didn't have great equipment, but they had the innovative idea.
Speaker 2: And the way I look at it is also because
Speaker 2: the Bronx was the poorest borough. A lot of times
Speaker 2: you're about to tell the Herculeoids and these her I
Speaker 2: believe had I'm from Brooklyn, but I believe her had
Speaker 2: a massive system, which was the thing, so that Hurkley
Speaker 2: had the big speakers whatever, but a lot of people
Speaker 2: was cobbling together shit. I remember hearing about CAS was
Speaker 2: they would snatched the audio PA speakers out of the
Speaker 2: training station. CASS would take the speakers out of their
Speaker 2: TV sets, out of the big consoles. You had the
Speaker 2: big piece of furniture TV in the crypt. CAS was
Speaker 2: trying to cobble together anything to get some bigger sound.
Speaker 1: You know what, I believe you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was crazy. So I remember going to some
Speaker 2: parts to be like, Yo, this shit sounds horrible. Some
Speaker 2: of the mobile d what I would learn later, like,
Speaker 2: there's an incredible documentary I took part in it. My
Speaker 2: man Ron Am and Rad Lawrence produced this along with
Speaker 2: my boy Hassan Poor. It's called Founding Fathers, which gets
Speaker 2: into a lot of these early disco DJs that set
Speaker 2: the table for what HERK and the rest of hip
Speaker 2: hop would be. Some of these cats. I remember distinkling
Speaker 2: that doc one of these cats, pops Hit, had some
Speaker 2: paper and gave his son a couple of g's, which
Speaker 2: was a lot of money still is. But then probably
Speaker 2: you know, of course, the living to go and buy
Speaker 2: the big effect official stuff, sir. When Vegas Speakers was
Speaker 2: a big brand, get the right amps and all of
Speaker 2: this stuff. I mean, they had better. A lot of
Speaker 2: these mobile DJs that led up to it had better
Speaker 2: sound quality. But the innovations were definitely sparked by what
Speaker 2: HERK did and the cats wanting to cut, scratch and
Speaker 2: mix and what Flash did, like going into serious R
Speaker 2: and D did innovate tremendously, so that all did go down.
Speaker 2: But you know this is what you navigated through.
Speaker 1: I believe you only know I went. I went to
Speaker 1: Cuba for the first time in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: and it was like it was like time traveling back
Speaker 1: to the seventies.
Speaker 2: I went to Cuba earlier and.
Speaker 1: They were one guy had a car speaker, one guy
Speaker 1: I had that.
Speaker 2: Thank you yes, and they were something similar. When I
Speaker 2: went to Cube, they jerry rigged whatever they can have
Speaker 2: and it was so magical to watch the whole community.
Speaker 1: I have the headphones, I have this record, I have
Speaker 1: this turntable, I have this cassette player.
Speaker 2: I saw it at these cords.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I seen people with razors, like yes, it was
Speaker 1: the most incredible thing I ever seen.
Speaker 2: A lot of that in the in the in this
Speaker 2: desire to be in that space because it was so
Speaker 2: huge at that time. And yes, once again HRK did
Speaker 2: have the Hercules, which was the name of his big
Speaker 2: powerful speakers, but a lot of other cats didn't have that.
Speaker 2: You just didn't have the money. That stuff costs a
Speaker 2: few thousand dollars to get the amps, the speakers. All
Speaker 2: the equipment needed was a heavy lift. That's why the
Speaker 2: famous story is when the Blackout of nineteen seventy seven happened,
Speaker 2: a lot of cats in the Bronx went to them
Speaker 2: areas when the and they liberated a lot of equipment.
Speaker 1: See that's how I thought hip hop started.
Speaker 2: And it's you know, the great thing about YouTube now
Speaker 2: if you google Grand Master Flowers, Pete DJ Jones, people
Speaker 2: not telling the story, but there was little clips and
Speaker 2: moments and footage of these guys that people found some
Speaker 2: maybe somebody filming on a Super eight film camera and
Speaker 2: you could see Flowers and you could get a peek
Speaker 2: at these guys. But if you see this documentary, which
Speaker 2: I believe should be on two b By now was
Speaker 2: on YouTube for quite a while, this Founding Fathers, you
Speaker 2: get a real good look and understanding of the people
Speaker 2: that predated what we know of as hip hop. So
Speaker 2: it was a fascinating story with a bit more of
Speaker 2: a history that's not as widely known because these guys
Speaker 2: didn't make records. They just played at party, so they
Speaker 2: didn't record a compilation or do any of this stuff.
Speaker 2: All of that would happen during hip hop. The whole
Speaker 2: idea of the well once again, initially it was all
Speaker 2: about who the DJ was and how many watts in
Speaker 2: his system. The rapper was there just to big up
Speaker 2: who the DJ was. The rapper eventually took over inadvertently
Speaker 2: and when all the great records came out, and the
Speaker 2: DJ was pushed further to sell the back. The ones
Speaker 2: that were on top of the game became producers, the DJs,
Speaker 2: because it was the thing, you know, in the beginning,
Speaker 2: as you know, I'm sure you know, in the early
Speaker 2: phase of hip hop hitting records, everybody had their DJ
Speaker 2: because the DJ was that was the nucleus of it all.
Speaker 2: But that pushed further to the back, unfortunately as the
Speaker 2: rapper became, you know, the kind of pre eminent thing.
Speaker 1: So I've been dying to ask you all my life.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm going to time travel. Let's go to
Speaker 1: Let's go to nineteen eighty eighty one. All right, sure,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be your intern. I'm ten eleven here.
Speaker 1: I want you to walk me through from sketchbook to
Speaker 1: completion when you see it ride by. Walk me through
Speaker 1: the entire process. Now, I mean, like in your early beginnings,
Speaker 1: but tagging a train like you're Campbell soup. Yeah, idea, Yeah,
Speaker 1: walk me from sketchbook, acquiring the paint, knowing what time
Speaker 1: to go, who's the lookout. I want to know that
Speaker 1: the entire duration of how this happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, spray paint was. It was all kind of
Speaker 2: liberated at that time. Of course, it's a New York thing.
Speaker 2: There's a reason where any place that's selling spray paint,
Speaker 2: it's usually in a cage. It's usually like a metal thing,
Speaker 2: because that was requisite.
Speaker 1: That's how how long did it take them to catch
Speaker 1: on that this is what it's for.
Speaker 2: This all started back in the seventies, okay, I mean
Speaker 2: you just your hardware store. It'd be like, where's all
Speaker 2: the spray paint going? And it was like, clearly, I
Speaker 2: mean the casts was on some super stealth shoplifting shit.
Speaker 2: That was what it was. Ninety percent of where it
Speaker 2: came from. That's how it was.
Speaker 1: It was. Even so no one's like pulling up the
Speaker 1: year I got forty cans? How much is that? No one?
Speaker 2: Hell, everybody for the most part doing this at that
Speaker 2: time is a teenager. All of this culture was invented
Speaker 2: by teenagers. Okay, the beginnings of the rap hip hop thing.
Speaker 2: Everybody's is a teenager. So nobody has one hundreds of
Speaker 2: dollars that's required to go and do this, And so
Speaker 2: those metal frames were put were affixed to that part
Speaker 2: of the hardware store that sold spray paint. That became
Speaker 2: a thing, but before that was a thing in the
Speaker 2: graffiti fine cats would be like, yo, such and such
Speaker 2: a store, such and such a location. They got all
Speaker 2: the right colors and it's a good look. So graffiti
Speaker 2: cats would move on these places to get the to
Speaker 2: get the paint. It was one well known graffiti artist
Speaker 2: whose girl had made a baby carriage and the space
Speaker 2: that was supposed to be the baby was hollowed out.
Speaker 2: So he going there with his chick, you know, and
Speaker 2: they were slipping. So they might be able to put
Speaker 2: ten or fifteen cans in this hollowed out baby.
Speaker 1: How many cans would you need to really make the
Speaker 1: train of your dreams?
Speaker 2: Okay, it tends how much? Yeah, no question. So for
Speaker 2: the soup can, that's a whole car top to bottom
Speaker 2: subway cars about twenty feet in length by about eight
Speaker 2: feet high. That's a good That might be a good
Speaker 2: twenty or so can. A lot of red and a
Speaker 2: lot of white, because that's the main thing. What you
Speaker 2: would have is you would have what you have different
Speaker 2: types of caps. Now, graffiti has now elevated to it's
Speaker 2: like an official art form, So there's companies that literally
Speaker 2: manufacture varying caps and tops to give you different sized lines,
Speaker 2: and we would have to hit up the Jiffy. The
Speaker 2: oven cleaner was one oven cleaner and spray starch had
Speaker 2: caps that would spray out in a wide area. So
Speaker 2: once you do your outline for whether it's a letter
Speaker 2: or whatever you're trying to draw, you then put on
Speaker 2: what we call a fat cap to do the fill in.
Speaker 2: So the line of a fat cap is probably three
Speaker 2: to four inches wide, so you can fill in quicker
Speaker 2: as opposed to the line the initial cap that line
Speaker 2: maybe not more than an inch a half inch.
Speaker 1: Always wanted to know how you determine, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could, you know, like everything under the sun.
Speaker 2: There are two tutorials all over you to that break
Speaker 2: down how you do this with these caps that you
Speaker 2: can now acquire. There's even companies that make paint with
Speaker 2: an incredible array of colors for the purpose of making art,
Speaker 2: referred to as aerosol art by some as opposed to graffiti,
Speaker 2: which is technically illegal, but in the formative days, this
Speaker 2: is how a lot of the paint was acquired. These
Speaker 2: were the different types of tools and techniques that would
Speaker 2: be needed, so you would do your outline, let's say
Speaker 2: for the cans. Then you do the outline. Then you
Speaker 2: switch up the tops and you start filling in those areas.
Speaker 2: So with that fat cap you get a wide line.
Speaker 2: You could fill that in as opposed to a thin
Speaker 2: line you'd be there forever using too much paint. You
Speaker 2: come through with a fat cap, fill that in, do
Speaker 2: the white areas at the top of the can through
Speaker 2: the red areas at the bottom of the can. If
Speaker 2: you will get all that right and tight, boom, then
Speaker 2: you come and do the other layers that need to happen.
Speaker 1: How are you able to see?
Speaker 2: Incredibly difficult. It depends if you're in a tunnel, Well,
Speaker 2: it's going to be a lot darker. But people would
Speaker 2: adjust and have a lot of graffiti. Writers of course
Speaker 2: would do a pre sketch in their piece book or
Speaker 2: on whatever piece of paper.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't do a whole lot of pieces, so
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to front like I was a master
Speaker 2: do this. I did a lot of tagging, but when
Speaker 2: I got with Lee, who was a master at that time, God,
Speaker 2: I learned a hell of a lot. So under lease
Speaker 2: tutelage regarding the techniques and different colors and stuff. I
Speaker 2: learned a lot of that from him, and then a
Speaker 2: lot of the art history stuff because I have been
Speaker 2: nerding out on pop art and all these different schools
Speaker 2: of art history. I'm sharing with Lee. So we had
Speaker 2: a nice little coming together sharing of information. So that's
Speaker 2: essentially so whether you were doing it's a great image
Speaker 2: of this and also Star Wars Martha Cooper's photos of
Speaker 2: my man Dondie rest in Peace in the yard painting,
Speaker 2: and so he's in the yard where you literally would
Speaker 2: have to climb up. There's an incredible iconic shot a
Speaker 2: Dondee stretting two cars in a yard, one leg on
Speaker 2: this part of the train, the other leg here as
Speaker 2: he's painting. Iconic photo and that's how what we call
Speaker 2: top to bottom hole cars. That was the reference. Top
Speaker 2: to bottom meant that the imagery went from the bottom
Speaker 2: of the train to the top and the entire car.
Speaker 2: It was a I think that was the hand of
Speaker 2: doom Piece. It was his name, Dandie, and then a
Speaker 2: hand at the end of the just super iconic.
Speaker 1: So would be necessary like what that is, No, you.
Speaker 2: Had to climb and hang off a ship to do
Speaker 2: it no ladder, You wouldn't bring a ladder, and you
Speaker 2: got to if you're really doing a big piece, you've
Speaker 2: got a big bag of spray paint, shopping bag. People
Speaker 2: wasn't rocking backpacks then, so I don't think that was
Speaker 2: a miss. So you pretty much have a shopping bag.
Speaker 2: So you'd have to navigate. You'd have to scope out
Speaker 2: what yard you wanted to do, because graffiti guys would
Speaker 2: want to hit specific trains. He was like, I'm killing
Speaker 2: this line. So the Fab five most of their great
Speaker 2: work was on the Lexington Avenue number five train, so
Speaker 2: that was a target. So you would then need to
Speaker 2: know where you can hit the five, whether you hit
Speaker 2: the yard, go to the yard up in Bychester, or
Speaker 2: you would know what tunnels the trains could be in
Speaker 2: the different parts. So in the graffiti scene network, if
Speaker 2: you will, at that time, if you was really tapped in,
Speaker 2: you would know or learn from other graph guys where
Speaker 2: you go to hit this particular line or I'm trying
Speaker 2: to get up on the fives, the two's, the a's,
Speaker 2: the b's, the d's.
Speaker 1: You had to know exactly where the trains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had to know, oh this lay up is
Speaker 2: where these trains. The layup means when the trains are
Speaker 2: not running doing rush hour certain times in the day,
Speaker 2: and then after seven eight when rush hour ends, they
Speaker 2: lay up most of these trains in certain places. So
Speaker 2: graph guys would be like, Yo, I'm trying to get
Speaker 2: up on this line, I'm heading here there, whatever. So
Speaker 2: that's all a part of the how you did it,
Speaker 2: the process.
Speaker 1: How long will it take you to the danger? Element
Speaker 1: one getting past security?
Speaker 2: If there's any no, you some So sometimes in a
Speaker 2: train might be in a particular tunnel, you would know like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's a layup in between such and such a stop
Speaker 2: and a tunnel where such and such a line a
Speaker 2: train is being laid up during the rush out, So
Speaker 2: you'd be like, oh, you jump off the tracks, you
Speaker 2: go to the end of the platform, you may run
Speaker 2: through the tunnel to a certain experience or maybe go
Speaker 2: down or whatever, and the train would it would be there.
Speaker 2: You can hit that particular line there or the yard
Speaker 2: at either end of the where the trains end. Usually
Speaker 2: at the end of the train where the runner is
Speaker 2: on the map, there's typically a yard somewhere nearby where
Speaker 2: the trains go to the layup. Get made maintenance, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 1: All right, So my only education of the rivalry factor
Speaker 1: with a disrespect factor, of course, was B Street and
Speaker 1: the whole Spit The narrative beach Reet a story of
Speaker 1: a graffiti artist that's a lead here on this type
Speaker 1: that does these beautiful murals and then someone comes in
Speaker 1: behind them spray spit on top of the thing to
Speaker 1: disrespect them. Were there, what's going on? Was there jealousy.
Speaker 3: Amongst crews as far as like raging the great ruining
Speaker 3: art and the great look at that which was incredibly
Speaker 3: captured is a documentary called Style War, of course, and
Speaker 3: in Style.
Speaker 2: Wars, oh man, this was a big deal. Now I'm
Speaker 2: not actively bombing trains. That was the phrase we used
Speaker 2: for being aggressive bombing. But we was now have moved
Speaker 2: into the art. Well, that whole linkage that I envisioned
Speaker 2: is now happening. But during that period, there was a
Speaker 2: graffiti write a white kid name thank you, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: thank you so much because I'm like always and Cap
Speaker 2: who was doing a type of graffiti known as throw ups.
Speaker 2: These are kind of bubble letters. You can do them quick.
Speaker 2: You do a quick outline and then you put the
Speaker 2: fat cap on and do a quick filling. You could
Speaker 2: do them real quick. They'd usually be just a couple
Speaker 2: of letters. His name was Cap Cap and he I
Speaker 2: think in the graffiti slang at the time, if you
Speaker 2: weren't nice, witted or respected, you were referred to as
Speaker 2: a toy. And if people saw you as a toy,
Speaker 2: they would sometimes go over you if you respected somebody,
Speaker 2: like if you was a graffiti right, Oh, that's that's
Speaker 2: quest love. He's major. You don't want to fuck with
Speaker 2: his name and try to put you on there. You
Speaker 2: would respect and not go over somebody's name. People didn't
Speaker 2: really have a lot of respect for Cap is the
Speaker 2: way I understood it. And he went ballistic and he
Speaker 2: started doing Cap throw ups over everybody. I don't think
Speaker 2: it was all the raised and some dudes that was
Speaker 2: doing graft that was kind of thugging it. Yo. Be
Speaker 2: when I run up on him, I'm gonna do this,
Speaker 2: that and the third yo. But this white boy was
Speaker 2: no joke, and so he was ready for that. He
Speaker 2: knew what was coming. So literally, while Henry and them
Speaker 2: are making this documentary Star Wars, they encountered him in
Speaker 2: the tunnel. Now He didn't show it on camera, but
Speaker 2: he let them know like, yo, bi, I'm ready forever.
Speaker 2: And he was when he when this was going on.
Speaker 2: So if you see the documentary Star Wars, it literally
Speaker 2: captures that moment. You see young graft guys talking about Yo,
Speaker 2: this cat went over this, he went over my piece.
Speaker 2: Even seeing this other dude kid that was real nice
Speaker 2: with the white kid in the bron scene does this
Speaker 2: incredible mural in the dock right after that, a cap
Speaker 2: over it like a beauty. I was like, yah, how.
Speaker 1: Long can you expect your piece to stay up before?
Speaker 2: Haha?
Speaker 1: First of all, with the city, like if a train
Speaker 1: gets tagged, would the city be like, all, it's right now,
Speaker 1: take it back to the yard and clean it.
Speaker 2: It was an ongoing program at that time. When trains
Speaker 2: were being cleaned, the city was spending millions of dollars
Speaker 2: fighting graffiti. The mayor at the time, Mayor Cochage, was
Speaker 2: planning to put wolves and attack dogs in the subway yards.
Speaker 2: It was it was pretty heavy duty. It was the
Speaker 2: scourge of the city. It was hated. It was just
Speaker 2: I mean, it was everywhere, and I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: say that all of it was art if you will,
Speaker 2: But man, it was nobody really acknowledging like, well that
Speaker 2: went over there, it's pretty incredible. Look but the guy
Speaker 2: painted and look at this one over here. And so
Speaker 2: that was the general climate at the time. How long
Speaker 2: could it for you, Like I said, well, it depends.
Speaker 2: So once again, you could do a piece that might
Speaker 2: run for months, or you could do a piece that
Speaker 2: may go into the buff. Maybe that particular train was scheduled,
Speaker 2: it might go into the buff right away. So what
Speaker 2: began to happen was Henry Chaffont, who along with Martha Cooper,
Speaker 2: became these incredible documentarians of this work going on. The
Speaker 2: graffiti riders knew these guys and they would as soon
Speaker 2: as you do a train, you would hit because most
Speaker 2: graffiti kids, as we all were, had a bullshit one
Speaker 2: ten instamatic with a pop up flash. That's all we
Speaker 2: had as kids. Henry had official thirty five millimeter camera,
Speaker 2: as did Martha Cooper, and they became really a part
Speaker 2: of the scene that would do graffiti. Riders would hit
Speaker 2: them right away, Yo, I just did a train, It's
Speaker 2: going to be on this sunny side. So they would
Speaker 2: know what's you would let them know what side they
Speaker 2: can catch it with the sun on it, and they could.
Speaker 2: They would run out to really photographed these trains as
Speaker 2: they first left the yard after being painted, so oftentimes
Speaker 2: they would get a fresh shot b for the windows
Speaker 2: would get buffed first, but if you got the whole
Speaker 2: car first. So they now have this incredible documentation of
Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of various trains through that period that
Speaker 2: have been documented in many books. They're featured in the
Speaker 2: documentary Star Wars. There's a book Subway Art, and a
Speaker 2: couple of other books came out that became the textbook
Speaker 2: for people that got into graffiti around the world, Like
Speaker 2: they would all get blew my mind and got accidentally
Speaker 2: like some.
Speaker 1: Of the greatest pieces I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: It's d yeah, Italy, It's remarkable. I mean look, I
Speaker 2: mean I'm a part of the culture. I wasn't the
Speaker 2: most prolific or I've never claimed to be that. But
Speaker 2: sometime when I'm traveling, I'm in Europe and I'm on
Speaker 2: a euro train or whatever, and I see graph everywhere,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh boy, I can't believe. It's not like
Speaker 2: my fault. But I definitely helped you planning the seed
Speaker 2: definitely planning a lot of seeds that got beyond expectation.
Speaker 2: How the seeds bleue and got planted and germinated all
Speaker 2: over the world.
Speaker 1: All right, we haven't done this in a long time,
Speaker 1: but we have to stop the episode right here, all right,
Speaker 1: by by Freddy and I spoke for over two hours.
Speaker 1: You know how that gets. So come back next week.
Speaker 1: I want you to check your podcast feed for part two,
Speaker 1: where we get into wild style and your own TV
Speaker 1: rap years and talk about his directing music videos and
Speaker 1: his book. Everybody's Fly is out now. I brought my copy.
Speaker 1: Make sure you get yours. If you dug this episode,
Speaker 1: please tell somebody you think might dig it in the meantime,
Speaker 1: Get you next week, all right. Quest Loup shows hosted
Speaker 1: by me A mere Quest Love Thompson. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me. Produced by Brittany Benjamin
Speaker 1: and Jake Payne. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown, edited
Speaker 1: by Alex Conroy. iHeart video support by Mark Canton, Logos
Speaker 1: graphics and animation by Nick Padaloi. Additional support by Lance Coban.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Kathy Brown. Special thanks to Sugar Steve
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